Authors note:Happy Wednesday, I can gladly report that the first Beta reader has finished the second book and they enjoyed the ending. Hope to have it sent your way after some editing. For now, enjoy today's chapter.
Chapter 70: They ran across the sands towards the black fortress looming in the distance.
From above, the sound of massive wings shifting air grew closer and a name was still burned into their mind.Yarok, Glutton of the Black City
To their left. The ruins of a larger structure jutted out of the sand, large pillars of black stone tilting like broken teeth.
“Let’s get behind that!” Wretch shouted. They dashed behind the black rock as another shriek from above rattled their eardrums.
“Maybe we can fight it off!” Elenya said between heavy breaths.
“Listen to me, I remember its Blessings, it can breathe a deadly miasma but only once, it can shoot feathers like steel knives and is strong enough to shred any armor.”
“It’s diving at us!” Elenya answered, peeking up towards the sky from behind the stone pillar.
The black dot straight above them was growing in size, and he heard it whistle through the air.
“Get ready to dodge!”
A sense of imminent death washed over him, urging him to freeze in place. He broke out of the curse with a shake of his head. Before impact, it spread its wings. Blotting out the suns.
Like a comet, the creature crashed into the ruins and the two hunters threw themselves to the side in a cloud of dust.
Wretch had fallen into the sand, and Elenya ripped him up to his feet. Pillars from the ruin fell onto the ground as two black, feathery wings stretched in the dust. A beak that was several meters long and curved, peeked out of the cloud, serrated, with a long tongue slithered down its length.
Two fiery eyes lit through the veil of sand and blowing dust. Whatever it was, it was massive.
“Run!” Elenya said.
It gave another caw and with a single beat of its wings, it launched itself towards them. Forcing the dust to push against the ground. It was like a massive crow, larger than even the hound. A plume of black feathers stabbed outwards from its neck and from its chest stretched four black human-like arms of massive proportions with white fingernails.
Wretch dashed to the left, while Elenya dashed to the right. A moment later, a black beak pierced deep into the sand where they had stood.
It shook its head fiercely, giving off a short caw, and crawled towards Elenya on its feet, hands and wings.
Wretch made a sharp turn and rushed towards it, he wasn’t leaving his companion just yet. Every meter he got closer, a sense of deep and piercing dread filled him.
That’s the fourth blessing, it wasn’t mentioned in the book, he thought.
It turned its head and a large fiery eye looked straight at him. There was an intellect there, tricky and fickle. He was in the open.
With a fluid spin and a beat of its wings, a hailstorm of black feathers flashed towards him. The sleet of feathers shot out in a cluster, leaving him no place to dodge.
Instinctually, he grabbed onto Milley’s form. Human arms twisted from his skin to wrap tightly around his body.
The feathers were as hard as metal, digging deep into the flesh and he stumbled backwards. He had protected his vitals. Though he couldn’t see the creature, he could hear it drag itself across the sand towards him.
Wretch’s extra arms slithered back into his body and he threw himself to the side. A black beak carved with figures pierced the ground a moment later. He tried to get back on his feet but the black hands ripped at the sand and the beak pierced towards him again, forcing him to roll and crawl in a cloud of scorching sand.
The closer it came to him, the thicker the anxiety and feeling of inevitable death in his chest. It had him cornered. Suddenly, its onslaught stopped and it lifted its head as Wretch drew a breath in relief.
From behind its neck, Wretch saw a glimpse of red hair.
“You lunatic!” he said under his breath.
The bird cawed in pain and spun around. Elenya was crawling on the bird’s feathery backside. The Blinking Blade lodged deep into its feathery skin.
On her skin danced shades of red and she rammed the blade into the flesh. Struggling to hold on with one hand, still she ripped open a pulsing wound, spurting red blood in the sand.
It unfurled its wings and with a beat it flew into the sky. Elenya tumbled down onto the dune.
Wretch was quickly by her side. A furious caw came from above as the bird hovered with its wings beating the sand away in a storm.
“RUN!” Wretch said, hauling the girl upright. From its mouth, a black miasma spewed out. Like black steam that upon hitting the sand, burst outwards like a smokescreen. They took off, running down the dune as the black smoke followed.
The boot he had used for water storage was tied to his belt.
With a snap, the shoelace broke and it fell into the sand.
The water-filled boot tied to Wretch’s belt snapped loose and fell. He glanced back to see the black miasma smother it. The leather cracked and wrinkled, deteriorating and mummifying in seconds. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead.
“Hold on!” he called.
Two massive arms grew out of his back, each one black with serrated teeth stretching along their length. Jonah's form. He grabbed Elenya with his regular arms as the two heavy hands pummeled into the sand.
He lifted them into the air and he used the oversized arms like stilts to run in long strides. Elenya looked into his eyes for a moment before climbing up to his back. Above, the black bird circled with hungry calls.
He ran towards the Black City. It was close now, barely a few hundred meters away. But his flame was being spent at a furious pace.
“It’s diving again! Go to the left on my call,” Elenya shouted from above.
The massive arms belonged to the form of Jonah. And his actual body dangled beneath them, giving him no vision of the above. But he could feel Elenya holding herself in place on top of his back.
“Got it!” he called back.
Something whistled towards them from above. A dread grew in his chest as the creature was no doubt closing in. The aura of death grew stronger and every fiber of his being urged him to dodge. He bit down on tongue, steadying the rush along the sand and ruins.
“NOW!” Elenya roared.
Wretch threw himself to the left with a sudden push of his conjured claws.
The ground beside them exploded as the creature slammed into the dune with a tremor and a shriek.
“Faster! to the city!” Elenya shouted from his back.
He gritted his teeth and kept up the pace. Crashing through decrepit ruins.
He came over the top of a dune, the black fortress rising behind it.
A few dozen meters away, protruding from the sand was a set of stairs, forty meters wide, leading up to a gate and archway of black stone. Two flat blocks that must have served as doors, laid half submerged to the sides.
“We are almost there,” he called. Putting every fiber of strength into his burning muscles. Even though the enormous arms weren’t a part of his real body. The sensation of fatigue and the hot sand was as real as anything.
“It’s above. It might shoot at us!” Elenya said.
He rushed up the steps as a shadow moved across the sands. He saw it beat its wings and a cluster of feathers shot out from the shadow.
He planted both of his massive arms into the ground and jumped. Launching himself and Elenya towards the gate. She flew off with a yelp as he pivoted in the air. A massive hand grabbed her and pulled her close as the other bent and covered them like a shield.
Still in the air, black feathers peppered both him and the surroundings. Cutting into his new flesh. With a thud they slammed into the stone of the city’s entrance. Sliding across the slick, black rock.
Wretch’s head cracked against the ground and the world spun. He felt something tug at his torso and a voice pierced through his blurry consciousness.
“Ditch the arms!”
He obeyed, drawing them back into his body as she dragged him to the side. Funneling the last of his flame to his head to regenerate the concussion, the world snapped back into place.
Elenya dragged him through an empty doorway at the side of the gate. A black hand shot through after them, a feathery body crashed against the outside wall with enough force to shake sand from the seams of stone. The fingernails, carved with symbols, centimeters away from her exposed back. It was far too large to fit through. Elenya flipped the both of them over some kind of counter and they tumbled to the floor.
He blinked as she was lying on top of him. She gave him a look and held a finger to her lips, gesturing for silence.
A low coo came from the entrance and something sharp scraped against rock. Still on the floor he looked to the side. A jolt shocked him as a mummified face with black holes for eyes stared at him. The body was dried to a crisp and lay shriveled up beside them.
Something moved by the entrance and with a slam the entire building shook, dust sailing down from the ceiling.
Whatever the black walls were made of, it was tough. A caw echoed through the room. Elenya and Wretch kept deadly silent, lying huddled together in a jumble of limbs, neither daring to breathe. Another string of groundshaking slams rattled the room, followed by an ear piercing shriek.
After another few seconds of silence, they heard the sound of beating wings disappearing into the distance.
He sighed in relief. “It’s gone.”
Elenya nodded and got off him. “You hurt?”
“Just a few cuts and bruises. But I am low on flame, about a fifth left,” he said as he stood up.
“I got to say. You make a decent beast of burden!” she said, brushing the red hair from her face.
“I am just glad it did the breath attack earlier, or we’d been done for. I recognize it from my Hunter’s compendium.” He answered, looking over the interior. The room had no door, but the remnants of metal hinges still hung in the stone.
Parts of furniture were spread around the room. Rusted metal contraptions and a few pieces of wood smoothed like driftwood from sand and time. The only things remaining intact were the things made from the black stone. The largest of which was the counter they had hid behind and a square shaped locker that had fallen to the floor. In each of the corners, a thick layer of yellow sand nestled against the stone.
Wretch crouched down next to the corpse behind the drawer. It was lying on the side, with its mouth frozen in a scream.
“This guy looks human to me,” he said and stood up as Elenya searched through the drawers. Together they snooped around the room. Searching the locker, he found an empty bottle, made entirely of the same black material like the rest of the fortress. Unfortunately it was empty.
A slight movement by Elenya’s feet made him raise his head. He turned around, leaving the obsidian canister in its place.
“Doesn’t this room look like that guardroom at the inner gate? It’s about the same size,” she said. Wretch grew pale as a wrinkly, petrified face peeked up behind Elenya’s neck, the leathery mouth opening unnaturally wide. The corpse from the floor had animated.
“Behind y—”
She must have seen his shock, because even before he had finished, she spun around. The shriveled corpse gasped as its head shot out in a bite towards her throat.
She sidestepped the attack with ease, a knee shooting forward. It hid its ribcage with a crack and it gave a raspy moan as it staggered backwards. Raising its head just in time to come face to face with a red fist. Elenya slammed her knuckles against the skull, sending the corpse flying.
With a thud it crashed against the back wall. And Elenya walked over with a sour face.
“Sneaky, are we now?” She said.
The living corpse struggled to push its skeletal body up from the floor. She stomped on the skull and it exploded into shards of bone and leathery skin.
“We might not be big fish out here, but we are still Firelings,” she said with a cruel look.
Wretch crouched down to inspect the dried up body again. “It’s not Blessed, there is no coal.”
“And?” Elenya answered, rubbing her knuckles against her stump.
“So then they should be the product of a Blessing. Like that guy under the spires with the Death Flame,” he continued.
“Let’s worry about that after we aren’t dying of thirst,” Elenya said.
He nodded. “You have a point.”
Carefully, he peeked out of the guard room. To his right, the stairs led down into the ruin-filled dunes. To his left, they kept ascending between black buildings and archways, climbing towards the massive black tower looking down from above.